


Of all the voices in my head, the loudest one is mine

by TheMusicalCC



Series: Good Ending AU [1]
Category: The Real Ghostbusters
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Janine eventually regained her normal appearance FIGHT ME ABOUT IT, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of PTSD, Missing Scene, Non-Sexual Intimacy, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-01 22:55:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14531154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMusicalCC/pseuds/TheMusicalCC
Summary: Do you ever have those late night moments where you don't know what's real anymore? Janine does too. And Egon.





	Of all the voices in my head, the loudest one is mine

She wakes up with a sharp exhalation, clutching her chest. Her heart feels like it’s beating fast enough to burst out of her chest, breathing back in feels like a superhuman effort.

‘ _Janine..._ ’ the voice hisses in the wind and the rain outside, shaking the frames of the windows, sweet as molasses. Janine focuses on breathing.

_Not real. Not real. She can’t be. She’s locked away in a basement in Tribeca- or another dimension, as it were._

‘ _Oh, poor dear, do you really think that can keep me away?_ ’

“Shut up” she mutters, digging her fingers into the comforter. She can feel her pijamas sticking to her skin with sweat.

‘ _Don’t you see? I am a part of you_ _now_ ’ there is an air of sickeningly sweet triumph to the voice. Janine thinks she sees a glimmer somewhere in the darkness of the room. Greenish and dim, like eyes in the night. She squeezes her eyes shut and keeps breathing _‘You will never be rid of me_ ’

“Zip it” Janine’s voice is a hiss. _Not real. Not there._

‘ _You’ll always be mine_ ’

Anger and despair give Janine enough strength to sit up on the bed, her hand reaching for the lamp, eyes set where she thought she could still see the green glimmer.

“I said SHUT UP” in her mind, she screams it at the top of her lungs, but her voice comes out weak and breathless. She turns the light on. The room is empty, of course. _Of course_. She barely dwells on it, already racing for the bathroom, her stomach a tight knot. She slaps the lights on and pins eyes on the mirror, expecting to see thinner bones, longer legs, green eyes. Inhuman perfection. Her own pale, unrefined face stares back at her. The eyes under the hair that sweat has stuck to her skin are blue; she stares into them for what feels like an eternity to make sure. As blue as they’ve been for months now. Her legs give out and she just breathes and breathes and breathes and the wind still howls outside and the rain still falls and-

The first sob comes unannounced, ripping from her chest almost painfully, and Janine curls up into a ball on the floor, face buried in her knees and cries. She feels so breathless that after the initial wail, she can’t even make another sound. Her heart is still racing so fast that it actually hurts. But even between sobs, between tears, she whispers to herself over and over again, relieved.

“ _I’m still me_ ”

She doesn’t hear him come in, but then she feels Egon crouching next to her slowly. He places a hand on her back and waits, rubbing softly between her shoulder-blades. Thunderclap booms over their heads.

Later, when she’s back on the bed, her back against the headboard her eyes puffy and her breath still hitched, and he’s sitting at the foot of it with his notes, catching the light of her lamp, she dares to voice what she’s thinking.

“Is it like this for you too? With the Boogeyman?” Egon looks at her with a somber expression before turning his eyes back to his notes.

“...I still dream of it sometimes” he mumbles, sounding reluctant, and it’s almost enough to make her be quiet for good, but then he shifts with a sigh and continues, more firmly “I dream of him and… and the World-Trade Center”

He pauses. Rain hums outside.

“Peter says it’s normal” his tone is trained “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is relatively new in the psychology field as a diagnosis, but he’s confident that it’s exactly that”

“How can you stand it?” Janine whispers, realizing she’s biting her nails. She’d never done it in her life, but it’s become a regular problem in the past months- she can’t imagine spending a year like this, much less full decades, as it’s Egon’s case.

He shifts his weight again and purses his lips for a moment.

“Mostly, I remind myself that I’m living a different moment right now. It doesn’t always work, but it does most of the time”

“When doesn’t it work?”

“Well, that is… when I’m alone in the middle of the night” he admits, seeming ashamed with himself.

“Time doesn’t seem real after midnight” she agrees.

“I trust you know that makes no sense”

“Doesn’t make it less true, does it?”

“Conceded” he nods, the corners of his lips curling slightly.

“Egon, is that why you stopped staying up late to do work?”

“That… and I seem to have grown less resistant to sleep deprivation since my student years” he pauses and looks at her over the glasses “...was that what happened? Was it because you were alone in the dark?”

“Sort of” she squirms a bit, wrapping herself on the comforter more tightly. She’s cold in a way that isn’t entirely because of the rain.

“Her influence over you is completely gone, Janine, I assure you. Even her modifications to your body are gone now”

“I know, I just… sometimes I still hear her in my head. And I can’t tell if she’s just in my memory or-” she takes a deep breath and looks at her nails ruefully. They’re not as bad as they’d been just months prior, but they’re still rather battered “I guess it never does go away, huh?”

“It does” Egon assures. She wonders fleetingly whether it’s his idea of a white lie “Sometimes for years on end”

“But it eventually comes back”

“...yes” he doesn’t sound pleased to have told her that, though, and he ponders for a moment before continuing “I believe that the one thing you must keep in mind when it does come back is this: You beat her”

“Only because you snapped me out of it”

“No. She never managed to take over you entirely. She never managed to eliminate the core parts of your personality, and she needed a lot of manipulation and a mild degree of mind control to even convince you to listen to her at the docks” he reaches for her ankle over the comforter and wraps his hand around it softly to make her look at him. When she does, the color of his eyes seems to engulf everything and anxiety seeps away just a bit “You are stronger than her, always were”

The tie around her throat is almost tight enough to make her burst into tears, but she manages to swallow it down.

“Thank you”

He gives her ankle a quick, affectionate squeeze and releases her, eyes looking back at his papers, and they stay silent for a while. Somewhere in that pause, the pouring rain turns into a patter and Janine slides down onto the pillow and tries to sleep, to no avail.

“Still awake?” Egon asks after a while. 

“I could say the same to you” she's laying on her side, so she can't see him, but she can tell that his eyes are on the papers.

“You can’t sleep”

“No” she sighs “I’m still afraid that I’ll go to sleep and see her, I guess”

She feels Egon shift his weight again and can almost see him pondering what to say next.

“When I was a boy and my mother tucked me in to sleep...” he drifts off, as if changing his mind about speaking in the first place, but rushes out before he can decide to stay quiet “Sometimes, I would manage to get her to stay with me and hold my hand so I wouldn’t be scared until I fell asleep” he pauses and clears his throat again “… when I have a bad night, I try to think of every person who’d be holding my hand to give me courage if they knew I needed it”

“Does it help?”

“Amazingly so”

She waits for a couple of beats and then takes the leap.

“Egon?”

“Yes?”

“Would you hold my hand, please?” she feels him straighten up as though someone had pinched him and make a sound that’s not quite ‘ _Eep_ ’ but close “I guess that’s a no”

“No-! I-! _ahem_!” he breathes deeply and she can almost see him rub his nape. By the time he speaks again, his voice is controlled again “Certainly”

The bed squeaks as he makes his way to lie next to her, hovering above and to the side of her face for a moment, pale eyes boring into hers and face an interesting shade of pink, pencil and papers crammed in his other hand; then, he sits cross-legged with his back against the headboard, places the papers over his knees and offers her his free left hand. His fingers are warm when they close around hers and he looks more flustered than ever, but then he raises her hand and dips his head slightly to brush his lips against her knuckles and somehow this seems to help him calm down, his ears still lightly pink but the rest of his face regaining normal color. His eyes are as warm as his hand and she’s giddy.

“Try to get some rest” he mutters and turns back to his papers. She gazes at him as he works until she surrenders to a dreamless slumber.

In the morning, he’s sprawled next to her, over the covers, glasses askew over his face and his hand still holding hers. What little light her shutters let in catches on his pale eyelashes.

‘ _You’ll always be mine_ ’ a venomous voice echoes in her head.

 _Yeah, right_. Janine almost scoffs and squeezes Egon’s fingers lightly. _I was never yours. You tried, God knows you tried, but it’s like my ma always said, my head’s so hard it could shatter diamonds. Years of heartache couldn’t make me leave, what made you think a scrawny little water-wench had a shot?_

He wrinkles his brow and for a moment it seems like he’s going to wake up, but he just shifts a bit, chest rising and falling slowly. She detests the sole concept of belonging to someone, as if she were a dog or a pair of socks, but…

But.

_I guess if I were to ever be someone else’s-_

Now his eyes are catching the light of the morning and they look almost silver. Egon straightens his glasses to look at her groggily.

“I dozed off”

“Yeah” _No shit._ She doesn’t say the last part, but her grin must be eloquent enough, because he smiles back at her somewhat sheepishly.

“Would you be terribly angry if I went back to sleep?”

“Not at all” she shifts closer and, to her surprise, he reaches for her and wraps an arm around her, fingers rubbing her back, and a shiver that’s only part because it tickles goes through her. She lays her head against his chest and feels him swallow, her arm reaching under his to hug him.

_Still me and he still loves me._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure where this came from but I think I needed it.
> 
> Title references 'Voices in my head' by Joe Iconis


End file.
